


Never the Same

by penforthewin



Category: Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Genre: Night Terrors, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 22:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7658893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penforthewin/pseuds/penforthewin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone's gone through something that's made it impossible to be the person they once were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never the Same

“Come on sweetheart, you’ve barely touched your dinner,” his mother said softly.  
Ralph looked up at her blankly, before looking back at the bowl of smoking soup. He halfheartedly made to pick up the spoon, only to let it slip from his loose grip and watch it drop completely into the bowl. He heard his mother sigh irritably.  
“You were only on that island for a few months, and you had other boys with you. How could it have been that bad?” she asked stiffly as she started to clear the table, including his untouched bowl of soup, muttering how it was a “waste of food”.  
She doesn’t understand, she wasn’t there. Ralph told himself this over and over again, but it didn’t stop his gradually rising contempt for her. His mother ordered him to go bed, which he obeyed with little argument. Before there was a time where he would have fought with her until he became too tired to even keep his eyes open, now there seemed to be no point.  
He stared up at his ceiling, carefully observing the shadows on it and the walls. Ralph had grown to feel a need for light at all times. Sleeping in the dead of night when the moon was scarce had renewed his childhood fear of darkness. He was teased by the other children in the neighborhood, but he was beyond the point of caring what other thought of him. He soon drifted off into a light sleep.  
_“I got the conch! I got the conch!” He saw from the eyes of Piggy. He words cut off by the colossal rock that set him to his death, body washed away, any trace of him gone forever._  
_“The beast isn’t real!” Ralph yelled in Simon’s voice as the boys surrounded him, spears armed and at the ready._  
_The faces around, screaming in fear and excitement. Ralph heard his own voice screaming just as loudly. . ._  
Ralph bolted upright, clutching his hand over his rapidly beating heart. Cold sweat poured over his body. He panted as he swerved his gaze around the room. He leaned back down, and let out a deep sigh. He closed his eyes, but sleep never came.  
He was thankful for that.  
**A few weeks later**  
Ralph sat cross-legged in his front yard, absentmindedly tearing away at the grass. He heard children younger than he was playing in the yard across the street from his home.  
He scowled, unable to fight the bitter envy rising like bile in his throat. He envied their innocence, their peace of mind, and the untainted view of the world they possessed. These children didn’t go to the prep school he did, they probably didn’t know much about the plane crash. If Ralph remembered correctly, it wasn’t front page news and wasn’t covered for any more than a few days. There was a war going on. A plane crash and missing children wasn’t that important.  
His thoughts drifted back to Piggy. He said he lived with his Aunty? How was she dealing with the loss of her nephew? And then there was Simon’s family. And come to think of it, he hadn’t heard what had become of Jack and Roger. Would they be going to a prison of some sort? He was pretty sure that Samneric were okay, but he didn’t know how to find them. Ralph suddenly wished that he had asked his friends where they lived before they were separated.  
“Hey, are you okay?” a small voice pulled him back to reality.  
“Huh?” It was one of the children that were playing across the street earlier. And she had brought a few more of her friends with her. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he lied.  
“I’m Mary, and this is Joseph and Alex.” Mary said, gesturing to the boy and girl standing behind her. “What’s your name?”  
Ralph stayed silent for a few moments before saying, “My name is Ralph,” his voice sounded strained and croaked, as if he hadn’t talked in a long time.  
“Hi Ralph.” She turned back to her friends and whispered something to them; Joseph and Alex looked at each other, then smiled widely and nodded. Turning back to Ralph, she said, “We see you come out here every other day, but you don’t go anywhere. Do you want to play with us?” her eyes sparkled hopefully.  
Ralph scanned each face looking down at him cautiously, and then glanced across the street to see the other kids grinning and waving him over. He dragged his eyes back to Mary, who was waiting for his answer patiently.  
“Well, do you?” Joseph asked enthusiastically.  
Wordlessly, Ralph stood up. He noticed that he almost towered over them. Mary took this as a yes, and squealed happily as she grabbed his hand and led him away from his yard.  
Alex and Joseph skipped behind them, and Alex babbled excitedly, “We’re playing a game we made up; it’s kind of like tag. Except we kick around two different colored balls, the dark one means you’re ‘it’. The light one means you’re immune to being tagged. You have to try to get the immune ball, and avoid the tag ball. If you get tagged, you kick the tag ball until you tag someone else, then you’re out. There’ll be two people left in the end; the one with the immune ball wins. . .”  
Ralph felt as if he was enveloped in a large, warm hug. He broke out into a small, genuine smile, the first he had in a long time. His shoulders felt a tad bit lighter now. He still a long way to go before he regained his sense of normalcy, if ever, and he knew that. But right now, it felt closer than it ever had before.  
“Who wants to be ‘it’ first?” a child yelled cheerfully.  
Ralph took a deep breath and raised his hand, “I will!”  
“Here, catch!” the child kicked the dark ball to him. “Three, two, one- go!”


End file.
